A shootout in Westmount Park

That crisp autumn morning, Policeman Charles Vickers of the Westmount force spotted, while on night patrol, a suspicious character lurking about at the corner of Sherbrooke and Victoria Streets in the town’s centre. When the individual in question made a wide detour in order to avoid coming face to face with the law enforcer, Vickers decided to follow him from a distance.

To all appearances, they both sauntered east along Sherbrooke Street, down Lansdowne Avenue, and eventually entered Westmount Park at Western Avenue (today de Maisonneuve) At this point, the nonplussed police officer momentarily lost track of his man.

It is difficult for us today with remarkably abundant electric power to appreciate just how dark it would have been in a park in 1905 at night.

There would, in fact, have been very little, if any, lighting of an artificial nature. Nevertheless, Vickers soldiered on into the park not knowing what was awaiting him. He astutely observed the imprints of footsteps in the white frost on the ground. Suddenly, while distracted with this discovery, he was confronted by the armed man in question and ordered to stop in his tracks. He did so.

The scofflaw directed Vickers to walk in front of him deeper into the park yet, at the same time, he failed to disarm the law enforcement officer.

Vickers wisely heeded the command and moved gingerly forward. After an agonizing few moments, the officer unexpectedly realized that he no longer heard the tread of feet behind him, so he turned abruptly. The dubious character was now a full 30 feet away and Vickers despairingly seized the moment, and his revolver!

“We are equal now,” he bellowed at the suspect, who immediately responded with a shot directed at the officer. It missed. Both darted behind trees, and thence began a shootout worthy of an old-fashioned American western.

The Montreal Star proclaimed in its familiar histrionic, Tory fashion: “On the one side there was the desperado anxious only to get away, and in the death of the man before him seemed his only chance. On the other side was the watchman entrusted with the important duty of protecting the property of the town which employed him, and he meant to get his man dead or alive.”

In all, nine shots were fired—five from the gun of the miscreant and four from Vickers’s service revolver. Only the latter had success, striking the felon in the right arm, whereupon, according to The Gazette, “he quickly dropped out of business.”

Now wounded and, for all intents and purposes, captured, the individual in question (later identified as one Frank Mooney) agreed, albeit reluctantly, to allow himself to be escorted to the nearby police station.

The Gazette picked up the story: “For a while he went along quietly, merely attempting to drop things from his pockets, which the constable made him replace. At the corner of Metcalfe Avenue and Sherbrooke Street the man made a most determined effort to escape, after trying in vain to hit the constable over the head with a hammer he had in his possession.”

When the pair arrived at the station, Mooney was systematically searched and discovered to have had in his possession a litany of burglar’s tools—from a jimmy to several picklocks, “the articles he had been attempting to distribute along the road.” As he was near fainting from loss of blood, he was brought to the Western Hospital (today the Children’s) where his elbow wound was dressed by Dr. Galletly. He was later transferred to the infirmary of the Montreal jail where he awaited court proceedings.

Later, in the afternoon of that same day, Mooney was brought before the Hon. Judge Ulric Lafontaine of the Police Court, Court of King’s Bench, then located in the old Justice Building adjacent to the Montreal City Hall. Showing no remorse or pain (“though his right hand was almost black with blood driven to it by the tight bandage round the wound”), Frank Mooney, aka Frank Malloy, pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted murder and demanded a lawyer. He made no attempt to hide his face but, at the same time, glared ominously at the sketch artist who had been sent to cover the story for The Montreal Star.

Mooney did eventually retain legal counsel - Maitre J. P. Cooke of the law firm Cooke and Mullin—and all appeared before Judge Matthias C. Desnoyers on Oct. 25 of that same year. During the proceedings, Cooke aggressively tried to shake Constable Vickers version of the events to such an extent that Desnoyers cautioned the legal practitioner, later interrupting him with the exclamation: “You might be able to bluff a jury of ignorant men, but you can’t bluff me!”

Time ultimately established that Mooney, 42, an American from Cleveland, had just completed serving a four year sentence in Buffalo, NY, for having shot a policeman in that city and whose own police superintendent described him as “an all round crook.”

On Nov. 10, Mooney, testifying on his own behalf before a Montreal jury, casually explained away the existence of a black mask found in his pocket as belonging to his little daughter “after a party at his home” in Ohio.

However, he failed to comment on the presence of other assorted and dubious items which were found in his possession at the time of the encounter with Constable Vickers. The jury took all of 15 minutes to find Mooney guilty of attempted murder and he was eventually sentenced accordingly.

As for Constable Charles Vickers, his Westmount excitement was not exclusive to the incident in question. On Oct. 20, 1905 (only three days after his adventure with Mooney in the city green), he made the macabre discovery of the dead body of one George Wilkinson, cabman, living at 135 Nazareth Street, Griffintown. Vickers had spotted the horse drawn cab sauntering along on Western Avenue (today de Maisonneuve), riderless, and he decided to investigate. The officer, who only days earlier had courageously engaged a harden criminal in a gun fight in a tenebrous Westmount Park, jumped back in horror when he opened the cab door and saw the corpse of its late driver!

- Robert N. Wilkins is a writer with the Quebec Family History Society, an anglophone genealogical association based in Pointe Claire. He can be reached at montreal_1900@hotmail.com. His “BLOG” is found at www